


A good question

by NienteZero



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fraction Hawkeye, Gen, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, because I don’t know what mcu Hawkeye’s voice is, general goofiness, light smacking around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 18:57:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20140375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NienteZero/pseuds/NienteZero
Summary: Clint’s captors want to know who he’s working for. Frankly, so does he.





	A good question

**Author's Note:**

  * For [51PegasiB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/51PegasiB/gifts), [skymning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skymning/gifts).

"Who do you work for!?" 

Spittle flew in Clint Barton's face, and he jerked his head backwards, almost immediately regretting his rash movement. Aww, headache. 

Clint had been yelled at by many more terrifying people in his day. But still, it was not ideal to be cuffed firmly to a solid metal chair, one cuff on each wrist, while any interrogator, no matter how small-time, tried to make him talk.

Well. Making him _talk_ wasn't the problem. They just never seemed to like his answers.

"Haven't you read the papers?" Clint replied.

This only seemed to make his interrogator angrier. Go figure. Clint reeled back from a harsh slap across his face. He already had a black eye and a busted lip and, well, in short, it'd be quicker to list what wasn't messed up. Business as usual.

(It wasn't his fault. He’d been skulking quite legitimately as an ostensible arms buyer when the whole helicarrier HYDRA SHIELD info blast went down. Thanks for that, Nat. At least she'd got him the briefest of all possible warnings via back channels. Only enough for him to get his ass in the wind. And surprise, surprise, while trekking through three kinds of hostile territory (four if you counted all the people who just didn't like his manners) he'd found trouble.

When your highway home is through seedy underbelly bars and hostels it's not surprising that things happen. But Clint never understood why they had to happen to him. He'd seen something he shouldn't have, maybe put an arrow through someone who needed it (a guy in an alley, a gun, a girl who looked terrified) and was just off his game enough to be caught before he got out of that particular hot mess of a city.

And here he was, with mister spray-it-not-say-it, tired, hungry, roughed up, annoyed at life in general and the whole SHIELD-was-really-HYDRA disaster in particular, and not inclined to give away more than he had to.)

"I don't know what you're talking about. What papers?" the spittler said, leaning his red, angry face close to Clint's. Clint scrunched his nose up. Not great dental hygiene there either.

"Just give me a straight answer and you might live," his interrogator continued, "tell me who sent you to kill Bruno. Tell me who you work for."

"Eesh. I mean, it's hard to say, isn't it?" Clint shrugged as much as he could in the confines of the cuffs. Who the hell had a metal chair bolted in what looked like the living room of a fairly pleasant villa? What a weird decorating touch. 

The spittler snarled. He grabbed Clint by the throat, squeezing and shaking him. Really, why throttle someone if you want them to talk? Clint choked down as much air as he could get and waited to be allowed to speak again.

He coughed to clear his throat. "I get why you're mad," he said, "I mean, I also very much want to know who I'm working for. It's the kind of thing you just take for granted, but eh, I guess not." 

"Don't play games with me!" his interrogator said, "someone sent you to assassinate Bruno, and I'm going to know who!"

"Eeeeh," Clint winced, "funny story though, that one was just coincidence, I mean, he _was_ being shitty to a lady, and I kind of did that one as a freebie."

He didn't think that was going to get him any love, and he was right. The spittler lay into him, three swift backhanders to the face, and then it was gun time. Clint didn't love gun time.

The spittler pushed an offensively macho handgun under Clint's jaw.

"Who. Sent. You. Who do you work for!?"

Clint's lips twisted ruefully, "I dunno, we could look at my W2, if I could find it, but I have a feeling that's not too accurate. Really throws you for a loop when you thought you were working for the good guys but then it might have been the bad guys. Futzing complicated, and I got a headache. Honestly, I'm kinda pissed off at my partner too, and if she doesn't get her ass in here in a minute I might not even buy her a post-rescue drink."

The expression on the interrogator's face was comical as it journeyed through puzzlement to understanding to alarm. Alarm came too late to save him from the Black Widow's bite, electrical current shooting through his body and dropping him like a saggy bag of rocks.

"Nat, my hero," Clint said wryly. "Also my futzing partner who blew my cover in the field."

"I came, didn't I?" Natasha said, rolling her eyes. "Anyway. You should watch your back better."

Natasha had Clint out of the cuffs in moments, and with his arm over her shoulder they headed out of the villa, bickering over who was going to buy the post-rescue vodka this time.

**Author's Note:**

> Any time I listen to Police and the Private by Metric I end up thinking about Nat and Clint. “Keep one eye on the door, keep one eye on the bed, never expect to be sure who you’re working for.”


End file.
